And That's My New Philosophy
by xRJLupinx
Summary: Collins grades papers, and Angel decides to sit in and watch.


**Author's Note:** Finally, my first proper Rent fic! I've been meaning to write one for ages, and here it is. The idea for this one came from the song 'My New Philosophy' from the musical revival of 'You're A Good Man Charlie Brown'. If you haven't heard that show, then you should, because Anthony Rapp and Kristin Chenoweth are in it, and they're amazing. :) But if you're a fan, then you should notice a few scattered lines from 'My New Philosophy' in here, and I do not own them.  
This one is dedicated to Heather, who writes lots of awesome Angel/Collins fics and inspired me to get cracking on mine! Enjoy. :)

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When Angel Dumott Schunard returned to her apartment in the late afternoon, she found Tom Collins slumped comfortably against the side of the raggedy sofa with a bunch of papers in his lap, and with a few papers graced across the coffee table in front. His fingers gripped a red pen, the cap of which was between his teeth and chewed loosely as the anarchist read the paper in front of him. Angel knew exactly what was going on here, even with a second's glance: Collins was grading papers in that usual way he always did, though sometimes he graded in the bedroom or at the kitchen counter. Still, there was no doubt about what he was doing-- the expression on his face and the pen cap in his mouth gave it away.

Angel had never had much interest for when Collins graded papers-- after all, he usually would get frustrated and then start talking to the paper, muttering random phrases. So Angel didn't bother to sit and observe him. She'd normally go out and drum, or visit Mimi, or just go do something else. Which hadn't been the case lately, since it had been a long time since she'd witnessed Collins grading essays.

Collins's eyes flickered upwards as the door closed loudly behind Angel and she skipped over toward the couch to sit lightly on the edge. She plucked the pen cap from Collins's grinning mouth and was immediately greeted with a kiss as he leaned forward toward her. "Hey, baby. I thought you said you were gonna be with Mimi all afternoon...?"

"Oh, I was," Angel replied, twirling the pen cap in her fingers. "But then Roger came by after an hour or two, and after we all socialized, it became pretty clear that Roger and Mimi needed their time together. I mean, they've still been pretty awkward with each other."

"Yeah, I know. They getting any better with each other?" Collins asked, with a glance at the pen cap and then back at Angel. She shrugged.

"Well, I guess... Obviously Roger couldn't be too pissed right now seeing as I'm sure they're going to be hanging out there for a while, but how am I supposed to know how they're speaking to each other when I'm not there? It's just their thing. I'm there for Mimi, and of course I'd be there for Roger if he wanted to talk to me about it, but I can't force them to."

Collins nodded with a sigh. "I just wanna see them back to the way they were before New Year's. That was nice." Angel twirled Collins's pen cap again. "Hey, uh, can I have that back?" he asked her. "It's all gross and chewed on, you wouldn't wanna hold that."

Angel rolled her eyes at him. "Oh, please. What's the difference between what you did to this pen cap and what you did to me in the bedroom the other night?"

"Hey..." Collins started indignantly, but Angel laughed. "Oh sweetie, I was just making a joke."

Collins grinned at her and took the pen cap from her fingers. "And just for the record, the difference between you and that gross pen cap is that you are definitely not gross. And this thing is being chewed on for entirely different reasons..." He looked down at the papers again and made a tutting noise. "Damn kids. Sometimes they get on my nerves, but I still love 'em all in the end."

"That's good to know," Angel nodded. "'Cause if you just hated them, I'm sure they'd hate you. And that's not possible."

"I sure hope so." Collins stared at the paper in front of him, considering it, and then slipped the pen cap between his lips again.

Angel watched him for a few moments, watching the way his expression slowly changed as he quietly reacted to the work in front of him, and watching him scribble a few things down in red ink. "So," she said finally. "I guess you're just going to grade papers for the rest of the afternoon?"

"Um... yeah," Collins replied, mastering the art of speaking while a pen cap is in one's mouth. "I'm sorry, babe, but I really gotta get these done."

Angel shook her head quickly. "Oh, no, it's totally fine, I understand." She gave him a nod and a smile.

Collins smiled back and leaned up to kiss her once more. "Thanks. I promise, it shouldn't take me the whole rest of the day."

Collins returned to the essay, looked it over, scribbled some notes onto the bottom, and then tossed it onto the coffee table. Angel remained perched on the edge of the sofa, still observing him, which didn't appear to be bothering Collins so much since he seemed to be back in his little grading world.

She leaned her elbow onto the back of the couch and used her free hand to slip onto Collins's shoulder and pluck at his collar gently. "Although... you could always do this some other time..." Angel kept the tone of her suggestion light and airy, but it was only too clear what result she wanted to happen.

"Mmmmm... oh no, you don't," Collins said, now staring a little too intensely at the paper for Angel to believe he was actually focused on it. "The last time I agreed to that little suggestion of yours, those papers didn't get graded for two whole months. The students really started to want those back. And you know how lazy I am as it is."

"Yeah... but they did get graded in the end, didn't they?" Angel pointed out.

"Yes, but that's not the point. The point is that this time I promised them that I'd have their papers ready for them on Monday. And since that's tomorrow, it means I gotta do this now." His words were gentle, but firm. "I'm sorry, baby. I'll try to be done soon. But you might as well go do something. I'm sure you've got better things to do than sit here watching me grade and mumble about philosophy." Collins chuckled and shook his head, slipping his pen cap to the other side of his mouth.

Angel slowly pursed her lips together. "Actually... I think that's exactly what I wanna do."

"What?"

"Can I just sit here and watch you grade?"

Collins stared at her as Angel shifted to the rear of the couch and set her elbows on the back, waiting for an answer.

"Are you sure? I mean, you can if you want, but you don't have to."

"Yep." She moved around the sofa again, this time sitting down onto the empty space on the cushions. "I won't bother you or anything. I can just sit here quietly."

Collins nodded and glanced down to the paper in his lap again.

"Besides, I got a philosophy for you," Angel said, almost immediately as Collins's eyes left her face.

Collins looked back up, his eyebrows raised. "You got a philosophy for me? Okay, let's hear it."

"You're a big procrastinator," stated Angel.

The anarchist pretended to be offended and gasped. "Oh, that's how you feel."

"Yes," Angel nodded again, smiling. "If you had just done those papers before and not been so lazy about it, we could have been having fun right now."

Collins gestured to the papers in his lap and the pen in his hand. "_This_ is kinda fun…"

Angel huffed and rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah? That's what you think." She paused and listened to the effect. "Maybe that's my philosophy instead. Sitting here grading papers is dull."

"But you were the one who wanted to sit here and watch in the first place. Really, it's fine if you don't want to."

"No, I do," she assured him.

"Then why are you telling me?"

"Why am I telling you what?"

"That I'm a procrastinator doing a bunch of boring stuff. It's kinda true, but your intentions are kinda confusing me." Collins reread a line on the page again. "Still, you're not confusing me as much as Jill is in this one paragraph... Come on, girl, what're you trying to say? Organization and clearly supported analyzation, is that so hard?" With another sigh, Collins crossed out a few things and began writing in some words of his own.

Angel's eyebrows raised some and she stared over at the paper Collins was working on. "Are your students all that bad?"

"No, no, they're great. Even the lazy ones are pretty bright when they put their minds to it. And there are some rockin' writers in the class, too. Nah... see, Jill here just had trouble with that one paragraph, but her conclusion is amazing..."

Angel nodded and looked toward the papers on the table. "Collins?"

"Mmm?"

"Can I look at the ones you already graded?"

"Sure. You can tell me if you think some of my comments sound too mean."

Excitedly, Angel reached for the small clutter of papers all over the table and pushed them into a pile. Come to think of it, she wasn't even exactly sure why she was reading these. Sure, it was something to do, but this paper she'd started reading by... what's his name... oh, it was Tim... well, Tim had written one certainly intellectual sounding introduction that made Angel just already agree with him. When she flicked to the final page, she saw that Collins had only give Tim a B. Hmm. Well, Collins was the expert.

When she flipped to the next paper, its appearance completely shocked her. "Oh my God, honey, what is this hot mess?" she asked, holding up a distressed paper. "I mean, if you're looking for an answer to 'what's black-and-white and red all over', I got it right here."

"What?" Collins asked, looking up midsentence into his note on his next essay. "Oh... yeah, I guess that one looks pretty intense. But Ben didn't even try hard on that paper. I can tell he did it at four in the morning the day it was due."

Angel looked fascinatedly at Collins. "Whoa. How can you tell that?"

"Oh, 'cause I heard him tell his friend when he was leaving class. He knows better than that." Collins rolled his eyes and gave a light sigh. "I've seen him do better."

With a smirk, Angel skimmed through the rest of the paper. "Well, what do you want, hon? They're young. They have lives. I guess they should show a little more dedication, but at least he managed to get it done anyway. Haven't you ever rushed to get your homework done in the morning?"

"Me? Rush? You gotta be kidding," Collins said with a small laugh.

Angel raised an eyebrow at him and pursed her lips.

Collins raised his hands slightly in an 'I surrender' position. "Yeah, yeah, okay, I have," he admitted. "If I'm grading all these papers right now, what would you expect? I've had my fair share of rushing. But sometimes I got all my work done early with time to check over it. Not like I had anything better to do some of those times."

"Aww, my little studious yet rebellious computer geek," Angel cooed jokingly, and Collins burst out with a snitcker. She flicked her finger back and forth across the papers on her knees, letting her finger brush absentmindedly against the pages and making a loud whooshing noise.

"Ang..." Collins began, not looking up from the page he was currently absorbed in.

"Yes?"

"Look, I don't mind talking with you at all, but that paper flicking noise is really getting annoying."

"Oops. Sorry." With a last flick through the pages, she glanced at the papers before straightening them into a neat pile.

"Collins...?"

"Mmmph?"

"Why do you make your students spend all their time writing these fifteen page papers?"

Collins looked back up at her quizzically. "Baby, I'm not making them spend all their time on it. They know what they gotta get done and when they gotta do it, so if they're messin' around and creating stress for themselves, it's their own fault."

"But what's with having to sit there at a computer screen and waste your time writing about a bunch of philsophies some dead guy made up?" Angel pressed on. "Who said that everything in life can be classified by Naturalism or Exestentialism or whateverism, and that the author always put something in absolutely for a reason so that every single little detail is so important because it helps prove that?"

"Well, that's because--" Collins began, but Angel held a hand up at him.

"Honey, I'm not done yet! How is sitting there just writing and reading about those philosophies supposed to do anything for you? What's wrong with 'no day but today'? Is that not a good enough philosophy by your class standards or something to be studied? Because you can't just sit around and write papers on that, you have to go out and live your life and be active and stop dwelling on all that stuff on the past!"

She sat there and glanced huffily at the papers, with a royal air about her. Collins looked back at her with disbelief.

"Damn. I can't stand it!"

Angel gaped and whipped her head back at him. "I can't stand it?" she repeated. "Can't stand what? You can't stand me? What, did I insult your job too much?" She sighed and her previously fumed expression melted. "I'm sorry, sweetie, but I just don't get it..."

Collins smiled gently, put his papers back on the table and scooted over so that he could sneak an arm around Angel's waist and pull her toward him. "No, that's not it. You just got some pretty good arguments there. And you say you don't understand this philosophy stuff."

"That's 'cause I don't," she repeated. "I'm not stupid, but I sure don't know whatever's going on in those long philosophy books you read."

"You don't have to." Collins pressed a kiss softly against Angel's jaw. "Some philosophies aren't for everyone. It's just different views on life. But you've got 'no day but today', and that one's working great. I think the reason that one got so overlooked is 'cause it's so simple and yet, that's why people forget it."

Angel smiled and played with Collins's hands in hers on her lap. "Sweetie, I appreciate your wisdom and philosophical knowledge, but you're totally bashing my philosophy."

"Yeah, well, that's what you get for bashing Naturalism," Collins retorted with a laugh.

Angel pursed her lips together. "Okay, now I might not remember what exactly that is, but if you ask me, I think it's time you just finish those papers so we can have some Naturalism my style."

Collins raised his eyebrows. "Oh really? Is that what you're after?"

"If it'll get you to stop paying so much attention to those papers and more on me," Angel answered with a smirk, and scooting off of Collins's lap to sit on the edge of the couch. "You know, just for some extra ambition."

Collins chuckled and reached for his papers and red pen again. "I can motivate myself, thank you. Who said I needed any extra ambition?" He flipped a page on a paper and skimmed down it.

"Because if there's one thing that motivates Thomas B. Collins, it's some hot hands on Romanticism. And I'm not talking 'bout the kind in those long books of yours."

Angel looked back at Collins, and was pleased to see him staring back at her staggered and mischievous. She flashed him a supreme grin.

"And that's my new philosophy!"


End file.
